10 December 2014
The unclassified version of the United States Senate report on the CIA’s detention and interrogation of suspected al-Qaeda detainees released on 9 December 2014 makes sobering reading. The facts of the Senate report are not disputed. Between 2001 and 2006, the CIA detained 119 suspected al-Qaeda operatives in a number of secret locations. Of these, 26 subsequently proved to have had no connection with al-Qaeda. The detainees were subjected to a variety of interrogation techniques, including waterboarding, sleep and sensory deprivation, being made to stand for long periods in stress positions and being subjected to a variety of intimidatory techniques. President Barack Obama had already characterised such techniques as amounting to torture and had banned their use shortly after assuming office in 2009. It is impossible for any reasonable person to challenge this characterisation.
The facts have never been the subject of serious dispute – although the Senate report makes clear that greater levels of brutality had been employed than even well-informed outsiders had appreciated. The techniques in question had been approved by lawyers in the US Attorney-General’s Office, and had been discussed in briefings to the White House. In 2012 Jose Rodriguez, who had been respectively the head of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Division and head of the National Clandestine Service during the period in question, co-authored a book entitled Hard Measures in which he defended the techniques employed, as did successive directors of Central Intelligence. Rodriguez, who undertook the destruction of numerous tapes recording some of the interrogations, was under judicial investigation for three years before a decision was taken not to prosecute him.
The Senate report also stated that none of the information resulting from the use of these techniques had led to the disruption of specific terrorist plots and accused the CIA of lying about the value of the intelligence that had emerged from the interrogations. The CIA has vigorously disputed this and continues to assert that the programme produced significant intelligence on al-Qaeda. In this respect, at least, it may be that both sides of the argument are partly right. There is not much evidence to suggest that the interrogations produced intelligence that frustrated specific attacks and the Senate report does make a convincing case for the CIA having exaggerated the benefits of the programme. But there are grounds for supposing that the interrogations enabled the CIA to achieve an understanding of al-Qaeda’s organisation and membership and helped orientate them in a confused post-2001 world when intelligence on al-Qaeda was suddenly in short supply. In his book, Rodriguez described some of the longer-term al-Qaeda detainees such as Abu Zubaydah, once they had consented to co-operate with CIA, as constituting ‘walking dictionaries’ who could situate specific pieces of intelligence in a broader context and help to explain their significance.
While the techniques employed by the CIA cannot be defended, it is important to understand the context in which they arose. Prior to 9/11 the CIA and allied services had struggled to make headway against a target based first in Sudan and then in Afghanistan, two ‘denied areas’ which for different reasons posed unprecedented operational challenges. Few of the technical resources – communications intercepts and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) – which have since become a standard part of the CIA’s counter-terrorism armoury were then available. And in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, when it was feared that such attacks might happen on a regular basis, such understanding of al-Qaeda as had been developed was no longer of any relevance and the screens became blank. Detainee interrogation is not part of the skill-set of foreign-intelligence officers and no-one else in the US government or military had the expertise and the capacity to deal with the large number of detainees they found themselves holding. This task was given to private contractors who promised much and, having failed to deliver, graduated to ever more brutal techniques within a programme that clearly lacked sufficient controls.
The entire global history of counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency shows that when governments are suddenly confronted by a seemingly existential threat they do not understand, they invariably overreact and resort to illiberal techniques to address the threat. This appears to be part and parcel of the human condition. Counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency policies – and al-Qaeda is perhaps best thought of as a global Islamist counter-insurgency movement whose main target was the United States –tend to go better once a better intelligence picture is established and the real nature of the threat is better understood. At that point successful responses normally involve a move away from excess, and such has been the case with the US. By 2006, about the time that the CIA was beginning to have real success against al-Qaeda in the tribal areas of Pakistan, the ‘black’ detention centres closed. Three years later, the use of what have euphemistically been termed ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ was proscribed.
Although the outlines of the story set out in the Senate report have long been known, the release of what purports to be an authoritative account of the detention and interrogations programmes has had predictable resonance and will in the short term have done the US reputation much damage. There are well-founded fears that the report will serve as a pretext for attacks against US interests around the world. And states such as China and North Korea whose human rights records have been regularly criticised by the US administration have been quick to suggest that the US should put its own house in order before criticising others. This argument misses the point. The publication of this report, painful and ugly as it has been, actually shows that the US is capable of putting its house in order in ways that are unlikely ever to be true of the states criticising it. It remains to be seen whether the US administration will accede to calls for those officials involved in the programme to be subject to judicial proceedings. In all probability this is unlikely to happen. But irrespective of this the publication of the report should be seen as a positive step. Whether its impact will be sufficient to ensure against some future repetition is another matter.
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